Theater in Review

Occasionally in a theater, there's more to savor in the playhouse than the play.

That is the case these days on East 15th Street, where the new Century Theater has opened in the handsomely renovated former home of the Century Club, which was founded in 1851. From a pub-style bar to the 299 dark-wood seats, the Century is an elegant addition to Off Broadway. Unfortunately, its first tenant, ''Minor Demons,'' fails to give it a proper christening.

The play is a conventional drama by Bruce Graham about a down-on-his-luck lawyer who gets a teen-age murderer acquitted on a technicality. Like the building it occupies, the play is a sturdy antique, the kind of sober, unembellished script that 40 years ago might have been the subject of heated debate but now feels like a lost episode of ''Playhouse 90.''

Television is the Goliath that dwarfs ''Minor Demons''; the sheer volume of courtroom drama on the tube makes realistic plays like ''Minor Demons'' seem dated and unexceptional. And Mr. Graham is not helped by the production. Jeffrey McRoberts's amateurish lighting design -- startling reds during a confession scene, for instance -- forces all the dramatic moments into italics, and Richard Harden's staging often looks as if it came out of a textbook. Still, Mr. Harden elicits expert performances from Charlie Hofheimer, who plays the young killer (and who is clearly going places), and from Steve Ryan, who has a jolly time playing a gregarious police chief who commits a foolish error.

As the broken-down lawyer, Reed Birney is always believable but never able to add much color to a character and play too often sketched in blandly familiar shades of gray.

The play continues at the Century, 111 East 15th Street, between Union Square and Irving Place. PETER MARKS